Sleep was impossible. The locket sat on my nightstand, a silent, seismic presence in the dark. I watched the numbers on my clock flip from 1 AM to 2, then 3, the photograph burned onto the back of my eyelids. The look in his young eyes. The sheer, unguarded want.
By 4 AM, a desperate, restless energy had me pacing my apartment. I needed to see him. I needed to talk to him. The cryptic gift, the flight, the years of silence—it was too much to hold alone. But showing up at his door before dawn, emotional and raw, felt like an ambush. I needed a reason. A pretext.
My eyes landed on the scarf I’d worn to the market, draped over a chair. It wasn’t mine. It was the one he’d been wearing, the unfamiliar soft grey wool. In the strained awkwardness of our meeting, in the charged moment after the
